Wow, this forum looks as controlled as the church of old. I am reminded of a forum I drop out of because I have a phobic reaction to being confined by too much control. Kind of makes me think about what our reality would be if the church had managed to main control?

Re: Site Policies Regarding Links and URLs

This is pretty disappointing. I've spent a good amount of time over the years on various forums, and being able to link freely to relevant information is really helpful.

I don't understand why there is so much fear about people linking to "non-credible sources". If it's a bad source, people can demonstrate that by pointing out its flaws; it doesn't need hand-holding by mods to designate what sources they find acceptable or not.

For example, many people find Wikipedia to be a powerful starting place for understanding a topic, and I agree. I respect that the owners disagree on this, though would urge them to rethink the decision, and ask: even if they don't consider Wikipedia and such reliable, is it really to such an extreme that discussions get *damaged* by it? At worst, I believe it would just not contribute much. And in the absence of a solid danger, censorship tends to just reduce community interaction. I know that on the personal level, sadly, the strict linking policy has reduced my likelihood of engaging here much. (which is a shame since it seems to have quality conversations)

Also, I am sad because they declined my first post, which linked to a page I spent 5+ hours creating specifically for one of the threads, because they said it was self-promotion. :'(

Venryx wrote:This is pretty disappointing. I've spent a good amount of time over the years on various forums, and being able to link freely to relevant information is really helpful.

I don't understand why there is so much fear about people linking to "non-credible sources". If it's a bad source, people can demonstrate that by pointing out its flaws; it doesn't need hand-holding by mods to designate what sources they find acceptable or not.

For example, many people find Wikipedia to be a powerful starting place for understanding a topic, and I agree. I respect that the owners disagree on this, though would urge them to rethink the decision, and ask: even if they don't consider Wikipedia and such reliable, is it really to such an extreme that discussions get *damaged* by it? At worst, I believe it would just not contribute much. And in the absence of a solid danger, censorship tends to just reduce community interaction. I know that on the personal level, sadly, the strict linking policy has reduced my likelihood of engaging here much. (which is a shame since it seems to have quality conversations)

Also, I am sad because they declined my first post, which linked to a page I spent 5+ hours creating specifically for one of the threads, because they said it was self-promotion. :'(

I agree it's a pain.

Once you grind your way through your first 20 posts, if you can be bothered, it's much looser. After a couple of rejections for annoying reasons I ended up making a lot of short inane posts I wasn't much invested in to get past the 20 post barrier.